November 12, 2004
Now that Christopher Reeve has died
and Scott Peterson is guilty,
will Larry King just keel over dead?
So I just watched Larry King Live, since what else is there to do on a day when all the Bay Area is aflutter with the news - Scott Peterson is guilty. You know some snarkly grad student is gonna make a off-off-off-off-broadway musical about this circus, and this day will get a song of it's own. "Did ya hear? Did ya hear? / Everybody stand up and cheer / Peterson is G-U-I-L-T-Y." What the hell is Larry King gonna have to talk about? Now Aaron Brown is doing what CNN pays him to do - ruminate about What It All Means. Headcock, smirk.
I adore Aaron Brown. Seriously.
Anyway, what the hell is Larry King gonna do to continue his autopilot now that Peterson is guilty. Well, it's not over yet - there's the penalty phase. Or so I learned tonight from some laywer in a black leather jacket that nobody likes. I've totally tuned this garbage out. I was too busy focusing on the dignity and gravitas of the election.
A couple things trouble me. First, is the tendency, during the "person-on-the-street" interviews, for teary regular folks to pretend to want things "for the family." I noticed this earlier this week, when one of the news outlets interviewed a female Modesto resident with a voice like Suzanne Pleshette but with more bass. She was pointing at the ground and loudly proclaimed, "It's been two years, and I'm sick of the trial and the publicity. All I can say is that I want this crap over now...for the family." And today: "I'm so glad they found him guilty. Now I hope, for the family, they give him the lethal injection."
It's a disquieting...would that be transference? Hmm.
The other troubling thing is this uniquly American overreliance on this ephemeral, ineffible myth called "closure." Do we, as Americans, get off on victimhood so much that we promote the absence of a resolving chord into a cause for pity, paralysis, or worse?
I adore Aaron Brown. Seriously.
Anyway, what the hell is Larry King gonna do to continue his autopilot now that Peterson is guilty. Well, it's not over yet - there's the penalty phase. Or so I learned tonight from some laywer in a black leather jacket that nobody likes. I've totally tuned this garbage out. I was too busy focusing on the dignity and gravitas of the election.
A couple things trouble me. First, is the tendency, during the "person-on-the-street" interviews, for teary regular folks to pretend to want things "for the family." I noticed this earlier this week, when one of the news outlets interviewed a female Modesto resident with a voice like Suzanne Pleshette but with more bass. She was pointing at the ground and loudly proclaimed, "It's been two years, and I'm sick of the trial and the publicity. All I can say is that I want this crap over now...for the family." And today: "I'm so glad they found him guilty. Now I hope, for the family, they give him the lethal injection."
It's a disquieting...would that be transference? Hmm.
The other troubling thing is this uniquly American overreliance on this ephemeral, ineffible myth called "closure." Do we, as Americans, get off on victimhood so much that we promote the absence of a resolving chord into a cause for pity, paralysis, or worse?
